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Wednesday, 7 November 2012

Designing a new learning environment (#DNLE) Assignment #2

The following is an assignment submitted as part of the requirements of the DESIGNING A NEW LEARNING ENVIRONMENT MOOC course from Stanford University.

As the assignments typically include analyses of real or hypothetical educational settings, here's my disclaimer (oh yeah, I've always wanted to write this!): My views are my own and not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Assignment #2 -Write a description that tells a story of a real or hypothetical educational challenge or problem scenario (300 words)

Audience and context

This project aims at students at a major
Teacher Training College in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the last couple of
years, the local English Language Teaching (ELT) community has come to
appreciate the potential opportunities offered by technology integration to the
field of education in general and the teaching of foreign languages in
particular. Although it is now commonly accepted that a certain degree of
digital litaracy is crucial for our future teachers, its place in Teacher Training programmes is
reduced to workshops of a couple of hours a week, due to the demands of
mainstream subjects like English language, Phonology, Literature and Methodology both in
terms of class hours and assigned homework. In this scenario, the challenge is to offer
our trainees opportunities to develop the technological skills that will enable
them to become highly efficient and competent 21st century teachers, by
implementing online programmes which allow for the integration of technology to
the curriculum while following the trainees' own pace. As this programme should
not interfere with class hours or overload students and/or teachers, the
environment used must offer asynchronous training and a variety of
collaborative tools.

Technology infrastructure

Most students have access to high speed internet
service at home and they have netbooks provided by the Government’s one-netbook-per-student initiative. There's
also a computer lab and wi-fi connections available from 8 am to 10 pm at the
insitution.

Learning objectives and implementation

This programme will be implemented in the last 2
years of the four-year course of studies and the contents and objectives will be
divided in four units, coinciding with four school terms. By the end of the
programme, trainees will have fairly deep understanding of the following:

How to use web-based tools to enhance the four
language skills (writing, reading, listening and speaking)

How to foster collaboration
and evaluate different media to implement collaborative projects in their
classes

How social media shape learning in the 21st
century

How to make students aware of and acquire appropriate
digital behaviour (digital citizenship)